The Lightstep

by John Dickinson

  'Paid mob,' muttered Heiss. 'All the signs of it, I'd say. And they've spent half of it on drink already.'

  'If they see us, it could be ugly.'

  'Best be ready to move smartly when they come our way.' At the centre of the crowd the coffin moved. It moved like one of the medieval relics that the guilds brought out of their chapels on a saint's day to parade through the streets. The crowd gathered around it, following reverently as if the thing was sacred indeed. Many had removed their hats.

  They have killed their King, thought Wéry suddenly. On the cross. They nailed him.

  And that was Albrecht in there, in that box. It seemed to Wéry an obscenity that Albrecht, of all men, should be the one they used to make their point. The living man had been worth so much. Why should his remains be surrounded with this mock pomp and the artificial extravagances of grief?

  The coffin moved, at the pace of the holy, and paused at the water's edge. There were men standing in the barge, reaching to lift it down. There it went, safely, silently onto the deck. The shadows of the quay seemed to push slowly out into the river as the barge parted from the bank. A streak of water opened between it and the quay, and the barge was out into the stream, drifting down towards the bridges. On the wharf the mob crowded to the very edge.

  'Adelsheim!' called several voices. 'God bless Adelsheim!'

  But further back, at the edges of the crowd, others called, 'Down with the Warmongers!'And,'Give us back our children!'

  They were following the barge along the bank. Some were running ahead to the Old Bridge to take up position there. Feet sounded, hurrying down the cobbles, coming closer. The clamour of the crowd was growing.

  In a moment they would think of the New Bridge, too.

  The barge emerged silently from the middle arch of the Old Bridge, folding its oars for long seconds to pass between the pillars of stone. Above it men crowded and yelled at the parapet. One had climbed up and was standing balanced there, waving his arms like a mad black clown. The barge came on. Feet were running again on the waterside, keeping pace with it, down towards the New Bridge where the officers waited.

  'Bishop! Hey, Bishop! Give us back our children!'

  'They're coming!' gasped Heiss.

  'Stand fast,' said Balcke.

  Wéry clenched his teeth. There were figures at the end of the bridge, approaching.

  'You!' cried a drunken voice suddenly. 'You there! What are you doing?'

  'Steady,' said Balcke.

  Balcke and Fernhausen were at the parapet, ignoring the mob. They had thrown their coats back, and their white uniforms gleamed clearly in the dusk. The barge was coming on, holding its position to shoot the second bridge. Wéry could see the shapes upon it – the steersman, standing clear at the stern; the heads and shoulders of oarsmen; a small group of people in the centre of the barge, around a long shape that must have been the coffin itself.

  'Now,' said Balcke, and lifted his hand in a slow salute. Fernhausen bent outwards over the parapet. What seemed to be a large glove or gauntlet dangled from his fingers.

  'You!' yelled the drunken voice, approaching along the bridge. 'You! Stand! And say your business!'

  'They are – ah – rather close,' murmured Uhnen in his ear. 'Shouldn't we . . . ?'

  'Wait,' said Wéry, tightly. His eyes were on the river, but his ears were following the footfalls coming along the bridge. Not yet, not yet. The longer they could delay it . . .

  'Hey! You!' said the voice, a few paces from his ear.

  'Wéry!' hissed Uhnen. 'Shouldn't we . . . ?'

  'Yes. Now.'

  Hand to hilt. Metal rasping in the night. The curved blade, heavy before him, pointed along the bridge at the shadow-men advancing!

  'Stay back, there!' he cried.

  'Stay back!' echoed Uhnen, also with his sword drawn.

  'Ho there! Help here! Help!' The voice was louder still, full of rage and the lust for a fight. More feet came running. As yet there were only a handful of men on the bridge, but in a moment . . .

  'The infantry will retire,' said Balcke calmly. Fernhausen was already turning away from the parapet. His hands were empty. Whatever he was holding had been dropped into the barge, still passing under the arch. Balcke placed his arm on Heiss's shoulder and began to lumber back towards the Saint Emil side.

  Damn! thought Wéry. That leg!

  He should have thought of it. That leg, and the swift-footed mob on their heels! Why hadn't he foreseen this?

  How the devil were they going to get out of here?

  Von Uhnen was gone. Wéry was on his own. The approaching men were desperately close.

  He drew himself up to his full height. 'Keep your distance!' he cried.

  'You bastard!' a figure screamed at him. 'You murderer!'

  Beyond them, shapes and figures hurried on down the quay, yelling and calling after the barge. And at his back he could hear the slow clump, clump of Balcke's leg, still too near – much too near. He could hear the gasp of the Count's breath. Where was that damned coach?

  'Keep back!' he roared again.

  'Ho there,' called a voice from the far bank. 'On the bridge! On the bridge!'

  'Wéry!' That was Uhnen, from somewhere behind him. He could not look round. The men were sidling closer. Three of them, and another close behind. Cudgels. He could not see their faces. They were enslaved minds, not men but guildsmen, and he cursed them.

  'The first one dies!' he bellowed, pointing his sword. 'The first one!'

  (Clump, clump, clump, receding. And the rattle of a coach wheel on the Saint Emil wharf. Not yet, not yet . . .)

  Glances shot between the men. 'Get him!' cried one.

  But none of them wanted to be the first. Behind them other men had stooped to prise up cobbles. That was the danger.

  'Wéry!' (Von Uhnen again, close behind him now.)

  'Back,' muttered Wéry. 'Step by step . . .'

  Swords drawn, facing their enemy, the two hussars retreated across the bridge. Stones flew at them out of the night. One struck Wéry on his left shoulder. He barely felt it. A voice was yelling Come on! Come on! But whether it was calling to him or to the crowd he did not know. Behind him he could hear the steady plod-plod of the wooden leg; and the rising noise of hooves and wheels approaching across the square.

  'Hey, Wéry! Uhnen! Smartly, now!'

  'Run!' said Wéry. He turned and bolted. Ahead of him Uhnen was running, too. Cries pursued them. There was a coach wheeling slowly in the space before the coffee house. Heiss was helping Balcke inside. Von Uhnen was almost there. Wéry fled for his life across the short cobbled space and gained the door. He grasped it, stepped up, and swayed, because the coach was still moving. A few paces away, men emerging from the coffee house had paused to watch, as if pursuers and pursued were a gang of street-artists performing in the hope of a casual gulden or two.

  Hands reached and pulled him inwards. He tumbled over white-uniformed knees and heard someone swear.

  'Mind that sword!'

  'All right! I've got it. Now drive, Peter! Drive!'

  Wéry fought his way to a seat in the corner. Von Uhnen was struggling in to a place opposite him. A whip cracked. The carriage was picking up pace – to a fast walk, to a trot. Wéry twisted to look out through the small window. A man was running alongside the coach, gasping, cursing. For an instant, in the gleam of some lamp, Wéry saw his face – narrow and dark and twisted, looking up at him with the mouth open and a mad gleam of white around the eyes. He was dressed like a journeyman, with a battered hat jammed down over a sparse fringe of hair. 'You bastard!' he screamed up at Wéry. 'Come back!' He was trying to gain the carriage step. Wéry braced himself for a punch. But the carriage was faster. The man was falling away, still running wildly, howling after them, losing ground. The horses broke into a canter. The pursuit was lost in the darkness.

  In the river beyond, the barge was a hundred paces downstream. Most of the mob was still on the far bank. They had begun to gather aro
und a large, stone building on the waterfront. Clear above the babble Wéry heard the breaking of glass. He drew his head in.

  'We're away,' he said. 'But they've started to attack the custom house.'

  'Drink in their bellies and Rother's gold in their pockets,' said Heiss. 'They weren't going to go home without having some fun first. Damn, but that was well done, Wéry. They'd be playing cat's cradle with our guts now, if you hadn't been the rearguard.'

  Balcke said nothing.

  'It was – a little exciting,' said Uhnen. 'I'm glad I was part of it. What was it you let fall, Fernhausen?'

  'The Prince's glove,' said Fernhausen, in the same affected drawl he had used in the coffee house. 'From his right hand. Because the army is his right hand, you see. I saw an oarsman pick it up, so it landed well enough. That was the only thing I was worried about.'

  'Will they know what it is?'

  'Maybe, maybe not. We'll put it about, as soon as we can. That will wipe the smirk off Rother's face, won't it? He wanted someone to end up looking a fool, and it's going to be him.'

  'Clever!'

  'Not bad, as it has turned out. I must say I had my doubts when Wéry first suggested it. But we were all in a flummox up at the palace, and the Prince declaring that if we didn't come up with something by noon he would have the troops clear the wharfs after all. And that would have been delightful, wouldn't it?'

  'Wéry suggested it?' said Uhnen, looking at him in surprise.

  Wéry shrugged.

  'So,' said Uhnen. 'Not only Virgil, but Ulysses too! And Horatius on the bridge. Truly, my friend, I had no notion.'

  'I want to stop at the bend,' said Balcke.

  Heiss relayed the instructions to the driver. The coach slowed as it began to follow the long, looping road that wound up towards the gates of the citadel, and to the Celesterburg palace. At the first turning, it halted. They clambered out.

  The road was unlit. They stood part-way up a shadowed hillside, in the living night air. Above them the crags rose and rose to the walls of the citadel and the Celesterburg, gleaming with lights. Below them was the mass of the city, with more lights in its squares and on street corners. From somewhere faint strains of music rose to their ears. The black bars of the bridges stood out clearly against the pale river, but it was too far to see if anyone was moving down there now. The river wandered away to the south, between dark banks. A long cannon-shot downstream there was a speck drifting on its pale surface. The barge.

  'Well, there he goes,' said Balcke. 'Carrying our sins with him.'

  There was something regretful in his voice, as if the cart of his personality had checked its career for once and, against all natural laws, had rolled a little back up the hill to look at something it had run over. It was strange, too, thought Wéry, that he had stopped the carriage here for one more look, after all he had risked for his salute on the bridge. It was not like him.

  It had been Balcke's order that had sent Albrecht and his men into the cannon fire. Maybe it was not just for his precious army and its honour that the Count had gone down to the bridge this night.

  But halting the carriage had given Wéry a chance that he would not otherwise have had – a chance to say a last goodbye himself. And he could linger over it. There had not been time on the bridge. There was time now, in the cool air of the hillside, looking at the diminishing barge and thinking, Goodbye, goodbye. He tried to remember the man as he should be remembered. The face and the laughter and the friendship – 'Hey, Michel, have you ever looked at somebody?' – why was it so hard to recall them, as the eye fought to keep that dwindling black point in view on the dull surface of the river? He tried to rebuild the face in his mind – those mocking eyes, the fluid lips and teeth – and the man behind it, who had spoken truth in the disguise of a clown. 'Hey, Michel . . .' 'Hey, Michel . . .' Was he gone already? No, there he was still. Just.

  For long moments Wéry watched that black speck moving imperceptibly away, until it melded into the greyness of the Vater and left him with nothing.

  Nothing. He stood in the colourless night, and the cold wind. There was nothing at all, now, except a purpose.

  He drew a long breath. Then he brought his right hand across to touch his heart.

  A friend was gone. But also a distraction. Now, in his loss, the way was open to pursue the struggle all the more. That was how he must think of it.

  From now on, all his mind and all his strength must be spent on the fight against the French republic. Come peace, come war, that was all he had to do. Without question, without turning aside. He would eat and sleep only to sustain himself in it. He would speak only to further it. He would spend his life doing it; and his dying, too. He would march into hell for it, if he had to.

  Friendship was distraction. There must be no more of it. Love was corrosion. When the world was gone to the devil, even these things became the devil's tools. The devil would lie, cheat, find any way or weakness that he could to turn a man aside. Only hatred, as hard and sharp as steel, served the purpose now. Only through purity of purpose could the world be changed.

  'Come on,' said Fernhausen. 'We had best go up and report how it went.'

  They climbed into the carriage and resumed their journey up to the Celesterburg. The road curled beneath the fortress-palace. The ramparts towered over them, blacker than the night, lined with silent guns. The carriage slowed for the last slope. The 'walls flung back the flat rattle of the wheels, bloodless and spiteful. They rounded the northeast point of the citadel and approached the gate. The vast bastions spread to left and right about them, like the arms of a monstrous mother stretched wide to welcome her children home.

  IX

  The Letter from Wetzlar

  Lady Adelsheim, Maria and Franz were in Adelsheim to receive Albrecht's body when it arrived. They remained there for the summer. But in September, when most noble families moved from their estates to the city once more, they did the same. In Erzberg, the season was beginning.

  The season was beginning, but Maria was not to dance. She was not to look gay. She was not to join her friends in the ballroom. She was to sit demurely in the salons and drawing rooms, let the society of Erzberg see her, and let them remember that Albrecht had been lost. There would be no picnics or soirees or trips to the theatre. Her marriage to young Julius Rother-Konisrat was postponed until the spring. Mourning for her brother, Lady Adelsheim said, was more important than all these things.

  And day after day, she must wear black.

  Do not pout, Maria. It is the least you can do for him. Be thankful after all that you did not love him as I did.

  Lady Adelsheim still admitted poets and philosophers to her house in the Saint Emil quarter. But other notables of Erzberg came more often, especially her cousin Canon Rother-Konisrat and his hangers-on. And they shook their heads and spoke in low voices in the intervals between music being played or poetry read to the room.

  'How sad the times are! Oh, nothing can equal your loss, my dear. But did you know Lady Reisecken has also . . .'

  '. . . Did you see d'Erles and his émigré friends at the Canon's soiree yesterday? I swear that half of them were drunk before they arrived! Fresh from some gambling-house, I suppose. I imagine they had left this one in ruins, too . . .'

  'Really, it is shameful, after we have suffered for them . . .'

  '. . . Oh, the Prince is quite persuaded that I must have my lease,' said Lady Jenz-Hohenwitz. 'He has said so. But the palace never produces it. I believe that villain Gianovi is to blame. It is impossible to trust Italians.'

  'Indeed,' Mother said. 'Oh, indeed. Who could possibly trust an Italian with the running of the state?'

  'Oh, Constanze. Really!'

  'My dear, I have only repeated what you said . . .'

  Not even Mother would criticize the Prince aloud. It was always easier and safer to speak against the army, or against the foreign-born First Minister. But Lady Adelsheim would not let the others forget that behind all the organs of
the little state stood the one man who was responsible for them all, and whom she blamed most for the death of her son.

  The Saint Emil quarter had been built within the last hundred years. The streets were all paved, and the houses were broad-fronted, broad-windowed, and most stood apart from one another with small gardens about them. The Adelsheim house, which had come into the family with Lady Adelsheim's marriage, was decorated with busts of classic figures, reliefs and elaborate lintels above each window. On the lowest floor were the working rooms. On the first, reached by steps from the street, were the main reception rooms. Above these were the main bedrooms, and also Lady Adelsheim's study, and the little room on the other side of the landing which served as a library. The library was walled with bookcases that rose from floor to ceiling, and the bookcases were crammed with leather-bound volumes, most of which had been bought by Lady Adelsheim from the incomes settled on her by the Rother family. There was little colour in the room to relieve the relentless browns of the book-spines, and if it had not been for the big, square, six-paned window it would have been a dark place indeed. The only pieces of furniture in the room were a chair and a settee, and only on the settee, placed under the window, was it possible to read without a light.

  Maria was on the settee, and in a state of rebellion.

  To 'improve her mind' that morning, Mother had given her the house copy of Kant's Perpetual Peace. Maria had leafed through it, and found that it was a short, dry work, full of prescriptions for a world without war. It was exactly the sort of thing that interested Mother these days. It was exactly the sort of thing that did not interest Maria.

  Maria did not want a world without war. She wanted Albrecht back. If she could not have Albrecht back, she did not want anything. Most certainly she did not want Kant, whom Mother called 'The Sage of Königsberg'. Maria half-remembered that there had been a time when it had been supposed that Kant would meet with the Frenchman Sieyès, and that between them the two great thinkers would resolve the differences between their peoples. But no meeting had happened. Perhaps the two men had sensed that no resolution was possible. Perhaps they, too, had swallowed their crumbs of guilt for Alba's death.